Windows 7 How To: Ungroup Icons & Put Text Back On The Taskbar

You may have caught the Windows 7 review week on Zath last week, with a 7 part review on the various features of, you’ve guessed it, Windows 7! If you’re already set up with 7 in tow, you may have noticed quite a few differences between it and your previous OS, be it XP or Vista (or Windows 95 depending on how clingy you are).

One thing you’ll definitely have noticed is the new Windows 7 taskbar, and the fact that all your applications are just represented by icons with no text describing what the application does! Being a minimalist individual, I quite like the new look, but if you want to get text back on your taskbar, don’t worry because there’s a way to do it!

All you have to do is right click the taskbar, and select properties. In the window that opens, there’ll be 3 tabs: Taskbar, Start Menu and Toolbars. By default, you’ll be on the Taskbar tab, which is the one you need to alter the icons (no surprises there). If you want your PC to look more like Windows XP or Vista, you can select “Use small icons” to make the size of the icons smaller.

If you want text to appear by those icons, you can choose “Never Combine” or “Combine when taskbar is full” from the drop down list titled “Taskbar buttons”, the difference being “Never Combine” won’t combine windows under one application icon no matter how full the taskbar is. Alternatively, the “Combine when taskbar is full” option will only combine windows when there are too many open windows to fit on your taskbar. Once you’ve applied the settings, you’ll see the changes.